Is the 2014 Senate Race Recruitment Season Over?

September 17, 2013 | Roll Call

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s anticipated entrance into an open-seat Senate race on Tuesday will bring the recruitment phase of next year’s competitive Senate landscape closer to its conclusion.

Senate Democrats, who can afford a loss of no more than five seats in the 2014 midterms to retain a majority, are on the brink of filling the remaining few gaps on the party’s roster of candidates. With Tennant in and Lt. Gov. John Walsh potentially running in Montana, the party has just one vulnerable seat left where it is still searching for a candidate: South Dakota.

Republicans are playing offense in all but two of the top races next year and therefore had far more recruiting to do, but they have also landed candidates in nearly all of their highly targeted races. While the search is ongoing in some second-tier states, most of the party’s biggest midterm question marks stem from the rampant competitive primaries that will play out next summer.

There is still plenty of time before filing deadlines and primaries kick off, but most top Senate candidates tend to be identified with about a year to go. As a result, Senate race recruitment season appears to be winding to an end.

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